I finished Okami last night. It was...long. Saying that first makes it sound like it was tedious. It wasn't. It's just that...there was a lot of game there, a lot more than I thought. For example, let's compare the playtime to that of the last two games I finished (all on the Wii). I finished The Force Unleashed in under 7 hours. Yeah. I actually went online to make sure I really played all of it. I did. On a side note, while I like the job the development team did on switching the control scheme for the Wii port, the graphics were UTTER SHIT. I realize that the Wii isn't a powerhouse of graphics, but the graphics quality of the game was way below what the Wii is capable of. It was insulting. Anyways, the next game I finished was Metroid Prime 3. That took 17 hours, which is about what I expect from that style of game. I finished Okami in 43 hours. Hell, it only took me 34 hours to finish Mass Effect 2. And I did all these games to the same level of completion. Complete the main story and all available side quests, without going back for the tiny nitty gritty things. Like in Metroid Prime 3 I didn't get all of the powerups, but I missed maybe 3. The game said I covered 94% of the content. In Okami, the carrot to bring you back for gameplay is collecting Stray Beads. There's 99 of them. I probably got 45. But I did every side quest. Granted I didn't play it in the most efficient manner, but I'm also a guy that makes extensive use of walkthroughs so that surely shaved off some time.
Shut up. I play games to relax, not to be frustrated by some stupid puzzle for 20 minutes. I play until I get well and truly stuck, then I check a walkthrough to get me going again. I feel no guilt for this.
Anyways, the game was really good. The cel-shaded animation style was very refreshing, the story was different than your average game and I even teared up a little at one point at the end. The combat system is really well suited for the Wii, don't believe the bitchers. It is also violently Japanese. I mean, duh, it's based on Japanese folklore, but even above and beyond that it has a Japanese feel. If you are looking for a fun, relatively family friendly (except for one part where the annoying tiny sidekick goes on and on about a woman's breasts) and very inventive game, I'd recommend it.
Now, on to the last two areas in Portal, then back to Fallout 3. I had a hard time getting into Fallout 3 the first time, I hope the layoff hasn't been too long to just jump back in.
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There will be good days and there will be bad days, and this is one of them - Les Barker
About Me
- fett
- Socially maladjusted PhD. A fount of witticism, self-loathing and paranoia. Essentially, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf rolled into a person.
My Other Blogs
The List of Other Peoples Madness
Ode to the Bumpersticker (awesome bumperstickers I've seen)
- -W.W.M.D (What would Muad'dib do?)
- -Republicans for Voldemort
- -Keep honking, I'm reloading
- -I love my country, but I fear my government
- -I was dead once. I didn' t like it
- -If you're going to ride my ass you could at least pull my hair
- -I'm already against the next war
- -Keep your rosaries off my ovaries
6 comments:
I'm intrigued. Tell me more about Okami? Should I check it out?
The only thing on my Wii radar these days is Mario Galaxy 2. The first was a blast and the sequel is supposed to be much better.
Hmmm, Okami is a tough game to sum up, but I'll give it a shot. It takes place in medieval Japan. You play Amaterasu, the sun god, in the form of a while wolf. 100 years ago you and a warrior named Nagi defeated an 8-headed demon named Orochi, but you died in the process. Now you have been reborn during a time of crisis. Darkness is corrupting Nippon, and it's up to you to cleanse the corruption. To do this you must regain the 13 Celestial Brush techniques.
The brush techniques are the major hook of the game. You can hit a button and the game pauses and the screen turns into a sepia-toned picture (though you can still rotate perspective). A brush appears on the screen and you control it with the Wii remote. By drawing different things you can manipulate the world around you, from recreating broken objects to lassoing clinging vines for reaching high areas, to controlling wind, water and fire, to slashing your enemies or conjuring bombs from thin air. The brush techniques are used both for combat and for puzzle solving.
The game follows general action game tropes. You enter dungeon areas, use your tools (brush techniques) to solve puzzles and progress until you pick up a new tool, then use that tool to defeat the end boss. But the fights and brush techniques make things quite inventive.
The other main thing about the game is that the visual style is done in cel-shaded animation, so it's very cartoony and very colorful. It's a pleasant change from other games.
Oh, and I finished Portal this weekend. Very fun. It's quite amazing what they were able to do with ambiance. They made a puzzle game simultaneously creepy and hilarious. Think about that. Puzzle game. Creepy and hilarious. At the same time. Then I spent the entire day yesterday playing Fallout 3. I have power armor and plasma rifle. All is right.
While wolf? White wolf.
Portal is fucking awesome. I love that game with both inches of my junk. I bought the orange box set purely for Portal (and, in fact, Portal is the only portion of it I've played).
There's one room with huge pillars you have to traverse... I navigated the room by putting portals in pairs of them and rocketing myself down into one surface and up out of the other, then shoot a new portal into the next pillar top at the apex of my flight. Not sure if that's how they intended you to solve it, but that's how I did... and I spent so much damn time in that room working on it that the constant reorienting of the screen finally made me motion sick. I had to put the game down and go lie down when I actually had to choke back vomit.
Hot damn, Portal is fantastic.
That's actually how I solved that room too. When Steam released their Mac client they offered Portal free. For everyone. That's how I got it.
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